Realm Walker

A vengeful spirit? Where did it come from?

A jolt of alarm shot through Black Wuchang. The tiny spirit before him posed no threat whatsoever, but anyone capable of commanding vengeful spirits had to be a Nocturnal Specter. Had the leader of Dark Rose found him? Was she planning to rob him outright?

While Black Wuchang wavered between shock and suspicion, he heard hurried footsteps echoing down the street. A figure appeared at the mouth of the alley and peered curiously inside.

It was a rather handsome young man, his expression tinged with anticipation and curiosity as he scanned the alley.

Their eyes met, and the young man's face went rigid. Black Wuchang read emotions in those eyes far more tangled than his own: elation, disbelief, fear...

A Nocturnal Specter? His aura is weak, so he can't be one of Dark Rose's people. Taiyi Sect, then? No. At this hour and in this location, he has to be someone from the official authorities. One of Fu Qingyang's inner circle.

When he recalled how Heaven's Injustice had been manipulated—Yuanshi Tianzun? The name flashed through Black Wuchang's mind.

At the same instant, Zhang Yuanqing had just processed what he was seeing. Holy shit, Black Wuchang?! Isn't he supposed to be fighting inside the school? Why is he here? Little Goofball, you set me up!!

Zhang Yuanqing activated his wireless earpiece in a hurry and shouted, "Acting Squad Leader Teng Yuan, Black Wuchang is right in front of me! Get here fast, the location is—"

Before he could finish, Black Wuchang launched himself off the alley wall like an enormous bird. His pupils contracted to slits and his brown irises turned a gleaming amber. Sharp bone spurs erupted from his back, elbows, and knees, tearing through his clothes with a harsh ripping sound.

Sorry, my mistake, goodbye! Zhang Yuanqing abandoned all thought of further speech and retreated at full speed, activating Night Wandering to vanish from sight.

Black Wuchang had attacked too fast. He hadn't even had time to recall Little Goofball, managing only to send the infant a single mental command—Run!

He was facing a Level 6 Evil-class Walker, at the peak of the Saint tier. Forget a Level 2 Nocturnal Specter like himself—even a Level 4 Nocturnal Specter would probably die on the spot.

Black Wuchang had been the right hand of the former Psychic Assembly vice president, a heavyweight who dominated his territory. Zhang Yuanqing's strategy was crystal clear—Flee.

However he couldn't flee entirely. He didn't understand why Black Wuchang had been in that alley instead of the school, but that man's presence meant Fu Qingyang and Elder Teddy's ambush had almost certainly gone wrong. At the moment, his job was to stall for as long as possible and buy the heavy hitters time to arrive. Teng Yuan had already received his message.

Without warning, Zhang Yuanqing's lungs caught fire. His throat burned and itched simultaneously, and a violent coughing fit seized him. His head swam, and his invisible form flickered back into view. Somehow, without his noticing, he had been poisoned by a hex toxin.

A sharp crack split the air. Black Wuchang, his entire body bristling with bone spurs, bent both knees and launched himself forward, the cement beneath him splintering from the force. He had no intention of giving his enemy a moment to react. He was confident he could kill this Nocturnal Specter in two or three moves at most. Whenever a high-level powerhouse hunted a lower-level target, it was always quick and clean.

A shrieking wind rushed toward his face. Zhang Yuanqing watched the enemy close the distance in the blink of an eye and felt every hair on his spine stand on end. Fighting through the agony wracking his body, he willed open his Inventory with a flicker of thought.

The next instant, a gleaming golden orb materialized in his hand. His feet sank into the ground and his shoulders buckled as though a mountain had been dropped on them.

Boom!

Black Wuchang drew his right shoulder back, cocked his elbow, and drove his fist forward like a spear, his powerful muscles propelling the straight punch with devastating force.

The earthen yellow barrier shuddered violently, wobbling like a bubble buffeted by the wind. Zhang Yuanqing staggered backward, each retreating step cracking the cement beneath him.

Boom!

A second punch. The Orb of the Steadfast let out a quiet crack, and a web of fine lines spiderwebbed their way across its surface.

Boom!

The third punch shattered the orb to dust, and the barrier dissolved into nothing.

Blood streamed from Zhang Yuanqing's nose and mouth. His face was white as paper. Black Wuchang pressed forward without pause, closing the distance, and drove a fourth punch at Zhang Yuanqing's skull. The air itself seemed to detonate with a thunderous roar.

Zhang Yuanqing let his body collapse just in time, dodging the lethal blow by a hair's breadth.

At some point, a pair of brand new red dancing shoes had appeared on his feet. After dropping into a full split to avoid the straight punch, the shoes sprang his legs upward and launched him into a spinning leap, evading Black Wuchang's sweeping kick. Then, with uncanny anticipation, the shoes executed a lateral hop that carried him clear of the downward chop of a bone spur.

Throughout the entire sequence, Zhang Yuanqing, the shoes' supposed master, was dizzy, disoriented, and coughing blood. A complete passenger.

"Quite the collection of items," Black Wuchang mused with an arched eyebrow. For a Nocturnal Specter at the Transcendent tier, owning two items already made him count among the wealthy.

This Yuanshi Tianzun had cleared two S-rank Spirit Realms. His net worth was impressive indeed.

"Go, get moving..." Zhang Yuanqing forced out in a feeble rasp, commanding the red dancing shoes to move.

In that moment, every thought of stalling the enemy had evaporated. The gap was too vast. A Hex Master at the peak of the Saint tier was overwhelmingly powerful. He had been in instant death territory from the very first exchange. The difference in strength and speed was so extreme that close combat was simply not an option.

That explained why he hadn't drawn the Bloodthirsty Blade. As for the Ghost bride, she was probably at the Saint tier in terms of strength, but the gulf between Saints could be enormous. He wasn't sure of her exact capabilities, but he knew Black Wuchang was at the peak of the Saint tier. That meant almost no one within the same tier could beat him. If he misjudged matters, there would be no second chance.

The red dancing shoes immediately carried their useless master away, sprinting with a click-click-click toward a residential building and scaling the sheer wall as though it were flat ground.

This was one of the shoes' rules: it ignored all terrain. They were a weapon of pursuit, and sometimes, a weapon of escape.

"You think you can run?" Black Wuchang said with a cold laugh.

Rather than chase, he reached into thin air and pulled out a crude straw doll, no bigger than a palm, with purple talismans pasted to its front and back. It radiated an aura of rot and corruption.

The doll's face twisted and squirmed, sprouting eyes, a nose, until it bore an unmistakable resemblance to Zhang Yuanqing. A faint red glow crept over its tiny feet.

Black Wuchang pinched the doll's legs between two fingers and squeezed.

Zhang Yuanqing, sprinting across the building's facade, felt his momentum die without warning. He looked down. The pristine surface of the red dancing shoes had been coated in a layer of ashen grey, as though the shoes had been discarded and left to rot for decades.

He plummeted and slammed into the ground in a billow of fine dust.

A wracking cough seized him, and flecks of blood sprayed from his lips. His lungs were in serious trouble. The toxin had spread through his entire body. If not for his formidable vitality, organ failure would have killed him already.

"Nice shoes. They are mine now." Black Wuchang pinched the straw doll's head between two fingers and squeezed hard, ready to crush this little insect without a second thought.

At nearly the same instant, Zhang Yuanqing threw his head back and howled at the sky. A beam of pure white moonlight pierced the clouds and bathed him in its glow.

Moon Howl!

The borrowed power restored a measure of his strength. He snatched the Demon-subduing Awl from his Inventory and drove it into his own thigh with all his might.

Brilliant golden light exploded outward. The ashen shadow that had just begun creeping across Zhang Yuanqing's face was blasted away by the radiance.

Unfortunately, the purifying force only affected its owner. The red dancing shoes remained corroded by the strange grey decay that had temporarily stripped them of their supernatural properties.

Zhang Yuanqing gasped for breath. The purification had flushed some of the toxin from his system, dulling the worst of the pain, but that was the extent of it. A Saint-tier Hex Master's poison was simply too potent, too terrifying. His combat prowess had been cut in half from their first exchange.

The Orb of the Steadfast was shattered. The Thug's Gauntlets would be equally useless, while the Red Dancing Shoes were contaminated. The Dream Entry Jade Talisman had already been used. The Demon-subduing Awl excelled at purification, but was not a weapon for killing. He had left the Cat King Speaker behind that day for the sake of keeping a low profile, though even that wouldn't have mattered.

The Ghost bride could probably hold Black Wuchang off for a while, but she most likely couldn't truly threaten an Evil-class Walker at the peak of the Saint tier.

Zhang Yuanqing ran through every item he possessed and arrived at a devastating conclusion: he was trapped. This was the most terrifying, most powerful enemy he had faced since becoming a Spirit Realm Walker.

"More items? With the Power of the Diurnal Spirit?" Black Wuchang exclaimed with a flicker of surprise. The orb he had shattered was one thing, merely Transcendent tier quality. But those red dancing shoes with their automatic evasion, and the brass awl the kid had just pulled out, were clearly far beyond any Transcendent tier item.

The brass awl in particular contained the Power of the Diurnal Spirit, which meant it held a fragment of Sovereign-tier power.

Black Wuchang threw his head back and laughed, his narrow eyes blazing with covetous delight. "What a pleasant surprise, what a pleasant surprise..."

"Surprise my ass!" cried a voice from above.

A light flickered on in a second floor window. A balding old man shoved the window open, stuck his head out, and unleashed a torrent of profanity at the two figures below.

Zhang Yuanqing's heart sank. No...

Black Wuchang looked up and regarded the old man with cold indifference. The next instant, the old man clutched his throat, foam pouring from his mouth. He toppled out of the window, his limbs twitching several times before going still. Dead.

Zhang Yuanqing's eye twitched. More and more windows were lighting up across the building as residents were roused by the commotion.

Black Wuchang immediately turned his gaze back to Zhang Yuanqing with a killing intent sharp enough to cut.

Zhang Yuanqing hesitated no longer. He pulled out the Red Veil and draped it over his head. He could only hope that while the Ghost bride held Black Wuchang's attention, reinforcements would arrive in time.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds...

Something was wrong, Zhang Yuanqing realized it with a start. The overwhelming, terrifying wave of yin energy never came. On top of that, every sound around him had vanished.

The entire world had fallen into a deathly silence. Black Wuchang hadn't attacked him either. What on earth was going on?

Zhang Yuanqing instinctively tried to pull off the Red Veil, only to discover with a shock that his hands no longer obeyed him. He could only move his eyes. He strained to peer through the narrow sliver of vision beneath the veil.

What he saw made everything click into place. His own body had turned an ashen grey. And it wasn't just that. The manhole cover beneath him, the cement road surface, everything was coated in a thin layer of the same colorless grey. It seemed as though color itself had been stolen by some unknown force.

As he puzzled over this sudden phenomenon, a voice reached his ears, deep and ethereal, with a timbre that was impossible to describe.

"If I remember correctly, this is the time and the place," the voice said with a soft chuckle. "Long time no see, Black Wuchang."

Black Wuchang's voice rang out, thick with raw terror. "You?! What are you doing here? How is this possible...? No, this can't be, this can't be—"

His voice cut off abruptly, and Zhang Yuanqing heard the dull thud of a body hitting the ground.

His mind raced frantically. Did someone just arrive? A powerhouse from which faction? The leader of Dark Rose? No, Black Wuchang's reaction was far too extreme for that.

He couldn't move. He had no idea what fate awaited him next.

Time crawled by. He kept his gaze fixed on the narrow strip of vision beneath the veil, watching. Slowly, the ashen grey began to recede like a retreating tide.

Color returned to the world.

Zhang Yuanqing tore off the Red Veil without a moment's hesitation and looked around.

A dozen meters away, a figure lay motionless on the ground. It was Black Wuchang. The Hex Master's eyes were wide open, an expression of horror and disbelief frozen permanently on his face. He was dead.

Beside the corpse, a finely crafted crystal chalice riddled with hairline cracks lay quietly on the pavement. The miniature sun inside the chalice was gone.

Whoever it was had taken what Demon Lord had left behind but hadn't touched the Fallen Holy Grail.

Confusion swirled through Zhang Yuanqing's mind. He struggled to his feet and staggered over to Black Wuchang's body. Bending down, he picked up the cracked crystal chalice and held the rule-type item in his hands.